I was born in Poland in 1951. My professional career – all based in the United States, but now increasingly global in scope – has been dedicated to brand positioning.
I co-founded Graj + Gustavsen in 1989. Our exclusive client list includes Brooks Brothers, HGTV, Levi’s, Harley-Davidson, Saks, and Food Network. I'd like to think that G+G is a favored resource of investment managers seeking decisive brand turnarounds and extensions.
I know the world of branding both as a line executive – buyer, designer and CEO – and as a hands-on consultant. I’m always in pursuit of harnessing entrepreneurship to maximize brand development opportunities.

Brand Intangibles: Unleash A Positive Frankenstorm

Inspiration was the focus of my last blog. What prompted me to write it? I see so many brand packages chock full of data . . . and rice-paper thin on intangibles. Inspiration may be the foremost void, but it certainly isn’t the only one.

What will you spend to defend and advance your brand? “Plenty,” many CEOs and brand managers say, “provided there’s concrete evidence the spending will work.” The truth is, hard evidence is what’s usually missing for some of the most important brand investments conceivable. That’s especially so if you take evidence to mean quantitative support in a narrow, horse-blindered way:

Audi is reportedly plowing $206 million to upgrade its dealerships. The nameplate also appears to be making big strides in challenging BMW’s and Mercedes’s dominance among German brands in the American market. That’s according to a recent Bloomberg article. For many managers, putting a gloss on a dealership might seem far afield from hard-nosed brand investment. Yet, it was dressing up intangibles like these that helped Toyota spearhead Lexus‘s entry into the luxury market.

A leader or brand manager can never lose sight of the big picture. Only with a clear grip on the big picture can you help consumers navigate your brand intelligently. How does the brand and its core values incite, motivate and inspire people? Global brands will look for that thread of connectivity that crosses geographic and cultural boundaries. It often spells the truest essence of the brand. Is the hamburger the universal heart of McDonald’s? Not when Mickey D successfully sells its Big Spicy Paneer Wrap in India nor its Gazpacho soup in Spain in the summertime.

Smart marketers know the clock has chimed an end to push marketing. As a discriminating thinker, you have to recognize how messages propagate. Then you need to activate them in the culture and marketplace. That demands lots of work. What about hard evidence of non-push marketing power? Some companies are waiting for quants on how exactly social media works before they experiment. If they agonize about bean-counting too long, they’ll be spending their dough for a marketing campaign with lots of historical evidence: The going-out-of-business sale.

A recent profile of J.K. Rowling in the The New Yorker caught my eye. She’s come out with a very different novel following her astonishing Harry Potter success run. Titled The Casual Vacancy, it’s set in an English town called Pagford. Rowling told the reporter: “I have drawn a map of Pagford . . . It’s one of the first things I did.” That’s how Rowling negotiates an intangible world with her readers. The same principles apply for brand managers with ephemera like a product’s nostalgia triggers, the crinkle of packaging, or even the aroma released as its unwrapped. In an intensely mobile world, branders are in the navigation business more than ever before. The tantalizing paradox is: You better devise a trustworthy and reliable map of the intangible world. Navigate that map by crunching numbers instead of inspired instinct? You’re just asking to strand yourself in a dark, cold forest.

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